Y'know what I'm fucking sick of?
Self-deprecating. Yeah yeah, no one reads this blog and my writing is inconsistent and my sense of humor is annoying and whatever the fuck else. Who the fuck cares? You? I seem to insist that "you" don't exist fairly often (which, on a realistic note, is fairly true), so probably not. I, however, know exactly why I throw up these self-deprecating veils, and it's not just to be relatable and irreverent: it's because I've been socialized to believe much of this about myself and am afraid of not covering my ass with a tungsten diaper of self-awareness and pre-emptive assessment. By asserting that "hey, I KNOW my writing sucks lol" I'm safeguarding myself from any potential criticism, spoken or not. Fuck that shit. I'm done getting down on myself for my perceived falterings when no one else is even remotely inclined to feel as strongly as I do. POSITIVITY, MOTHERFUCKER.
This post is about Swearin', one of my favorite bands of the past couple years:
I was getting all dong-stoked on writing up some huge, multi-installment excavation of ye moldye oldey forgotten/severely underrated pop-punk heroes of yore (ie Buford, Cletus, Zoinks!, Apocalypse Hoboken, Cigaretteman, etc...), but then, while browsing punknews with my brain turned off, I noticed an article detailing the imminent (November 5th) release of the second Swearin' full length. This year has produced enough amazing releases by bands I love to flood the observable universe, with new stuff from RVIVR, Laura Stevenson & The Cans, Direct Hit!, The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die, Big Eyes, Rumspringer, Carcass, The Slow Death and a jillion more, but I really didn't expect anything new from Swearin' considering it's only been, like, what? a year? since the self-titled dropped. This troupe is industrious and coincidentally me-pandering as the dickens, so I figured it was high time to rescue this post from two months rotting in the queue.
And hey, this is great because writing anything that doesn't have a negligible degree of separation from P.S. Eliot is an embarrassing, pointless waste of time according to the majority of my posts
After playing together for a good portion of their lives as The Ackleys and P.S. Eliot, really-really-similar-looking-or-maybe-identical? twins Katie and Alison split off to pursue main projects without one another for the first time. Katie went on to placing her solo bedroom project Waxahatchee at the top of her 'to do' list, while Alison and Kyle from Big Soda went off to construct a golden calf to 90's cuddlecore ie Dear Marje (I promise I didn't just invent that term). Following Moses' decidedly non-twee-friendly return, however, the two instated Swearin' as the one true god.
(ugh)
Because the internet is a terrible, attention span shattering place and I wasn't at the stage in my life yet where I was challenging that shit, when I first heard the What A Dump demo in very early 2012, I just sorta nodded in approval and let it get deeply lost in the Autobahn carwreck that was my priorities list of Music To Get Into. I actually didn't even give it another shot until, like, 3 weeks ago (and way after I caught genital rigor mortis over the self-tilted LP) (...), but it is just as great as I remembered.
I didn't realize this had a physical release, but there it is on a dead format you can buy with ironicbucks from Stupid Bag Records' page. The demo's a fantastic, 6 song affair with early versions of both "Kenosha" and an inferior, awkwardly-slow-once-you've-heard-the-LP-version of "Crashing". The remaining four tracks are exclusive to the tape (ha HA why) as far as I know, but are fucking excellent across the board, with a great, raw production style similar to the LP, just slightly lacking in fullness but with more vocal muffling. For their brevity, these tracks are incredibly memorable, with the infectious crescendo of "Snag", the beautiful vocal melody of the otherwise noisy "Subterranean", and the title track's incisive lyrics on street harassment. I particularly like this line:
I will holler and I will shake/ but I could never retaliate/ in a manner that would equate/ your wrong with my hate
While I've always loved Katie's lyrics, her vast, bookworm-ish expanse of vocabulary can be a little difficult to take in, and thus, lighter on emotional impact when a thesaurus isn't at hand. It could be seen as fairly arbitrary to compare the two, but because I view twins as simply the same person twice, I think I prefer Alison's. At the very least, they make me feel less intellectually knuckledrag-y, but they also coast along nicely on their own merits, with a blend of snark and cleverly phrased earnesty I really love.
...and then here's this, the REAL GOODS. THE SHIT YOU WANT. YEAH.
I was actually about to write "Swearin' was the best LP of 2012", but then I remembered that I hadn't objectively weighed the value of every recorded piece of music through instating an absurdly complex meritocracy that year. Not since '03, at least, in which 15 year old me determined that Korn's Take A Look In The Mirror was fine enough to demand entry into the realm of Public Domain.
I don't know why I haven't described the way the band sounds yet, but I think it Pitchfork or one of those smarmy review sites said it best when they referred to them as an amalgam of noisy, Henry's Dress-style pop (think Bust 'Em Green-era) and Superchunk-y indie rock through a pop-punk filter with unisex vocals. They may've also used the words "paean" and "tremulous" as unironic descriptive terms. What's important, though, is that this album is an awesome, nearly flawless collection of songs with one of the most perfectly fitting production styles I've ever heard. I know people bandy about the term "lo-fi" a lot when describing this record, but that seems completely misleading to me. Sure, there's a lot of fuzz and grit here, but there's no point where any of this becomes a hindrance or finds any instrument burying the others. If anything, it lends a tremendous amount of power to the songs, and nowhere gets it harder than the closing track, "Movie Star", which showcases the band at their most dynamic. Think You're Living All Over Me rather than Vampire On Titus or some other hissy, 4-track-under-a-mattress quality shit.
Another seemingly majority opinion I'm gonna PUBLICLY DISAGREE WITH because I'm extremely controversial, is how misandry barely has any weight against a patriarchal backdrop, because let me tell you something, mister, the Kyle's vocals are regarded as an okay, but ultimately unnecessary counterpoint to Alison's. imho, this isn't even about balancing out: Kyle's vocals are just as distinct and vital to the band's overall sound as Alison's, especially on tracks like "Crashing 2.0: Appropriate Speed Version" and the softer approach taken on the surprisingly beautiful, unfortunately relatable sadmagic of "Empty Head". He kinda reminds me of a more frantic, younger John Sampson, too, which is a plus. In other words, this isn't Lauren vs. Mike's sloppy, barely coherent rambling on The Measure [SA]'s Historical Fiction. Maybe that's not really a conversation outside of my own head, though.
I could probably namedrop nearly every track on here, from the great fade-in introduction, "1" to the aforementioned closer, but I'll refrain because no one in the universe likes reading track by track reviews. This album is fantastic, and if you need convincing before you dive in, look up the tracks "Hundreds And Thousands" (which has a perfectly placed swell of guitar noise in the build-up chorus), "Movie Star" (my favorite), and the comparatively cutesy "Just".
Which brings us to this:
Like John Goodman.
